Poinsettia teachers get prepped on high-tech gadgets

CARLSBAD -- High-tech digital "whiteboards" -- standard
equipment in every classroom in Carlsbad's newest elementary school
-- may spell the end to a favorite low-tech tool of the class
clown: the spit ball.

Teachers at the Poinsettia Elementary School got an introduction
to the digital whiteboard, and other whiz-bang technology that will
be used at the school, during a four-hour seminar at the campus on
Tuesday.

Officials said the gadgets mean teachers will spend more time
moving around the classroom and less time writing on a wall-mounted
white board with their backs to students -- an invitation to all
kinds of classroom misbehavior.

The $15.6 million Poinsettia campus is set to open with 18
regular education teachers, a few special education teachers and
418 students when school starts on Aug. 27, said Principal Steve
Ahle.

The room buzzed with excitement Tuesday as 21 teachers asked
questions of presenter Art Schindele, a distributor of the Hitachi
StarBoard -- a $500-$600 digital scratchpad about the size and
thickness of a magazine that can travel with the teacher anywhere
in the classroom.

Using an electronic pen, the teacher can write on the StarBoard,
which is linked to the teacher's laptop via a wireless network,
Schindele said. In addition to the laptop and StarBoard, each
classroom will have a digital camera and a digital projector -- a
technology package worth more than $3,000, Ahle said.

With the StarBoard, anything that can be created or accessed by
a computer -- class notes, a video, a photograph, a spelling
lesson, a map of the United States, a Web site, an excerpt from the
student textbook -- can be displayed on the wall via a digital
projector.

The technology means the days of the teacher standing in front
of the class writing notes on the whiteboard -- or even at an
overhead projector --- are numbered, officials said. Instead, a
teacher can wander around the classroom writing notes that
instantly appear as a projection on the wall.

"You can sit next to a kid as opposed to having your back to the
classroom," Ahle said. "You can solve a problem created by one kid
and include everyone."

Kistler said she had a "challenging class" last year and lost
the attention of some students as she wrote on the overhead at the
front of the class. Now she will be able to move anywhere in the
classroom as she writes on the digital board -- a neat trick, she
said, because inattentive students tend to focus better when the
teacher is standing nearby.

Teachers said StarBoard's ability to pull together various
documents and images into a single unified lesson plan will make
teaching and learning more effective.

The multimedia lessons also will be easier to put together and
more engaging and interactive for students, said Triesta Shuck, a
first-grade teacher at Poinsettia.

And most kids love technology, Shuck said. Tapping that interest
is another advantage of the StarBoard.

"Kids are very tech-literate," she said. "They'll probably be
teaching us."

Each classroom at Poinsettia also will contain three student
computers, and students and teachers will have access to two
encyclopedia databases: World Book and Grolier's.

In addition to the classroom technology package, each
six-classroom pod has a central learning area with computer
terminals. The school also has a computer lab with 37
computers.